In 1934 Dr. Francis E. Townsend of California also mounted a challenge to the New Deal, calling for the government to give two hundred dollars a month to all Americans who were sixty years of age or older. Critics of the Townsend Plan noted that more than half of the nation's taxes would go to compensate less than 10 percent of the population. Nonetheless, by January 1935 there were more than three thousand Townsend clubs claiming half a million members each. A Townsend Plan bill was introduced in Congress, but the Social Security Act of 1935 — developed in part because of the political pressure brought to bear on the administration by Townsend's supporters — dissipated much of the movement's energy.